Reuters’ Deputy Social Media Editor Was Addicted to Twitter

Twitter can be a great tool, unless you let it take over your life. That’s the lesson Reuters’ deputy social media editor Matthew Keys has finally realized after tweeting over 46,000 times. In an interview with Adweek, Keys said that he decided to unplug from Twitter because he had become obsessed with it.

Don’t believe that someone can become addicted to Twitter? Check out this quote from Keys:

I found myself staying awake until midnight or 1 or 2 in the morning and then having to come in to work the next day exhausted, unable to focus. The wheels kept spinning even when the machine was exhausted. In this industry, that’s been known to happen. But for me, it was happening a lot. That’s not healthy for anyone, and a lot of things suffer because of it. Your work suffers, your relationships suffer. You start using the platform to have meaningful interactions with people, and you substitute it for the meaningful interactions you could have in person. You put a lot of things on hold or on a delay or skip out on them altogether, and sometimes you have to in order to get the job done. But if you’re constantly doing it — and I was constantly doing it — that’s not healthy.

If you didn’t already know Keys was referring to Twitter, you’d think he was talking about gambling, drugs or anything else that is known to destroy people. Hopefully Keys’ indefinite break helps him deal with the problem.

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